"USA Today" carried an article on February 6, 2003,
stating that parents in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, may be among the first
in the nation to receive a report card from their child's school on "how
involved they are in their child's education."

What does the school mean by this? Does the school
mean how active is the parent in overseeing the education of his or her
child? It would not appear so. Further on in the article, school district
superintendent, Marianne Bartley, is quoted as saying "the goal is to
make sure parents are sending their kids to school ready to learn and
keeping on top of their academic progress."

There's that nebulous term again: ready-to-learn.
How is that defined? According to the article, one parent stated, "if
you take care of your kids, it'll show up in the report."

So, if you take care of your kids, they will be
ready-to-learn? Think again. It becomes obvious, in reading the article,
that it isn't the parent defining the terms, setting the standards, deciding
what constitutes ready-to-learn, it is the school. Likewise, it isn't
the parent doing the grading; it is the school. So actually, what we are
talking about here, with parent report cards, is parents being accountable
to the school.

Remember when the "partnership" concept was pushed:
parents in partnership with the school? So, is this how "partnership"
is defined: the school sending home a report card on how well parents
are doing in providing to the school a child deemed by the school to be
ready-to-learn? It would appear so. Doesn't this, then, make the parent
the junior or silent partner in this partnership? It would appear so.
Isn't this the very concept that Joseph Fields presented in his book,
"Total Quality for Schools" when he wrote, "Parents learn that they must
provide the best ready-to-learn student possible"...? Oh dear you say?
Oh dear, indeed!

When parents objected to the "partnership" concept
years ago, at the beginning of education reform, their concerns were dismissed
as the paranoid ravings of the "religious right." Guess concerned parents
were not so paranoid after all; guess they had good reason to be concerned.
How short our memory; how quickly we forget that parents were lied to,
made fun of, ridiculed.

Should parents be "anxious" about these report cards,
as the article suggested some might be? "Anxious" doesn't come anywhere
close to describing what parental reaction to this should be. Parents
should be very concerned and very outraged. Why?

A child that is deemed not ready-to-learn is considered
to be "at risk for failure." Under Goals 2000 and its peripheral legislation,
a child at risk for failure must be given the help he or she needs to
alleviate the at risk for failure factors. If it is deemed the parent
is the problem, is obstructing or refuses to do what the school deems
is necessary "in the interests of the child," then intervention by social
and health services, even child protective servies, is indicated. Either
of these agencies can remove a child from a home without cause, without
warrant, without due process. This is already happening.

The long and short of this is that the schools have
gained the authority they need to force parents to do what they want in
the raising and education of the child.

Parents should be outraged. Capital switchboards
should be jammed with calls from angry parents. Parents should be marching
in the streets. This is nothing short of the communist polytechnical system
of education in which the child is a ward of the state.

The parental right to oversee the upbringing and
education of the child is an inherent, God given right. That means no
legislature under our constitution has the authority, directly or indirectly,
to infringe on that right.

While the "USA Today" article tries to downplay
the authority the school has been given over the parent, the implications
are very clear:

"... parents who do not live up to any of their
responsibilities would be contacted by an outreach worker who would try
to help them become more involved. And parents who cannot or will not
cooperate would have an 'adult mentor' assigned to their child." The adult
mentor is there in the interests of the school, not the parent. As such,
it is obvious that an adult mentor will cause alienation of child and
parent.

The article goes on to quote Superintendent Bartley
as saying, "If they're just really resistant, they say, 'Get out of my
home, go away,' we still have a responsibility for that child." That responsibility
includes reporting the parents to social and health services or child
protective services.

But this won't happen to you? Don't bet on it. The
list of what constitutes "at risk for failure" covers the imaginable as
well as much that is not.

The parents in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, whose
daughters were given genital exams by the government school never thought
what happened would happen either. The genital exams were also the outreach
of Goals 2000 and readiness-to-learn. The school was checking the girls
to make sure they were not at risk for failure by having been molested
by an adult or parent. It didn't matter that there was no indication that
these girls had been molested. It didn't matter that the parents were
not notified of the exams, did not give permission, were not present when
the exams were done. The school was merely acting on the authority given
it to ensure nothing stood in the way of the school producing "a world
class workforce."

That's outrageous? Yes, that's outrageous. Certainly,
it's outrageous! But parents and citizens need to understand that in dealing
with the government schools, they are dealing with a system that sees
the child as a "resource" or "human resource" to be conditioned to the
perceived environment of the "created future"--the sustainable global
environment. If the parent gets in the way, the child will simply be removed
to an environment more conducive to the conditioning process.

Mother
and wife, Stuter has spent the past ten years researching
systemstheory with a
particular emphasis on education. She home schooled twodaughters, now grown and on their own.
She has worked with legislators,both
state and federal, on issues pertaining to systems governance
andeducation reform.
She networks nation-wide with other researchers andcitizens
concerned with the transformation of our nation. She has
traveledthe United States
and lived overseas. Web site: http://www.icehouse.net/lmstuter
E-Mail: lmstuter@mail.icehouse.net